People whose figures don't fit the fashion stereotype are fighting back, and the net is one of their forums, says SHELLEY HOWELLS.
Ninety-five per cent of weight lost by dieting is regained - usually with a few extra kilos thrown in for good measure.
Translation: dieting can make you fat.
Yet the
diet industry has never been bigger or more profitable, and the populations of wealthy countries, including our own, have never been fatter.
Is that so bad? Many argue no, citing increasing evidence that fitness - not fatness on its own - is a better indicator of overall health.
So those fed up with being the last bastion of acceptable bigotry (it's okay to tell a fat joke where we wouldn't dream of a racist or sexist joke) are getting increasingly stroppy or, at the very least, working on accepting themselves - thighs and all - instead of wasting time, money and energy on those unsuccessful diets that probably helped to make them overweight in the first place.
The web has been a major force in the movement for size acceptance and has many communities offering support to those who decide not to wait to be thin before starting to enjoy life.
The granddaddy of all is the US-based National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (since 1969) whose website is a good starting point, packed with the latest research, links and news.
On the international attack is the International Size Acceptance Association, which aims to tell the world any size is okay.
Positive Perfect You claims to be "doing our part to rid the world of hate and prejudice, as we support and promote the acceptance of diversity".
Body Positive, "boosting body image at any weight", includes a section on how to argue back against fatists, and Largesse is the very thorough network for size esteem.
While the New Zealand movement is in the early stages, local net offerings include the online-presence of news-stand self-acceptance/size-acceptance magazine Bella and the popup-window-loaded site promoting Auckland author Lynda Finn's size/self-acceptance book Largely Happy.
There is the online community of Real Women and a plus-size fashion section at FashionNZ.
Fat may be increasingly acceptable, but unfit is not.
The trouble is, the stigma associated with being overweight means many big people are too embarrassed to exercise, and few organised classes take into account their needs (from creating a size-friendly environment, accepting that a large person's goal may be fitness rather than weight-loss, through to the availability of larger-sized exercise gear).
The net has some fat-fit-tips. More to Love is a subscription-based community started by the woman who founded a fat-folk-only New York fitness centre.
The Fit and Fat page offers links to resources for plus-sized folk looking to get fit.
Closer to home is the Push Play campaign, to get all New Zealanders moving, regardless of shape and size.
As populations get heavier, market niches begin to sprout. Even fashion models are no longer necessarily stringbeans.
In the US, model agencies flourish with nothing but large models on their books. One has a website for and about plus-size models that includes tips on how to get started in the fashion business. There are a lot of fat-fanciers out there, too, and many, many online communities where fat people and those attracted to them can get together, such as Fat Cities, which has fat chatrooms, bulletin boards, photo personal ads and a load of fat links.
There is a plus-sized beauty pageant and the market for XXL sex sites is - pardon the pun - huge.
There is much Big Humour. Fat Lane is a web magazine where they take your common-or-garden skeletal celebrity and ... improve them. See Elle Macpherson as she could be if she tried harder!
Fat, So? is a wickedly stroppy site "for people who don't apologise for their size".
It's taken a while, but the so-called fatlash is starting to hit mainstream media with major articles on the subject in the Guardian.
Even gangly goddesses are starting to get it.
Gwyneth Paltrow walked a couple of kilometres in somebody else's extra kilos recently by wearing a fat suit for the film Shallow Hal - a film much hated by the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance.
She got a taste of life as a fat person when she wore the suit out in public.
"I realised immediately that no one was making eye contact with me, or would even look in my direction. No one wanted to connect with me," she said.
"It was a profound, very sad and startling experience."
* A few terms may need explanation:
Fat - many size-acceptance people happily describe themselves as fat, "reclaiming" the dreaded word instead of using the many euphemisms still widely used: plus-sized, fuller-figure, big, etc.
FA - fat acceptance.
BBW - big beautiful women.
BHM - big handsome men.
MFA/FFA - male/female fat admirers.
Supersize - The "larger of the large".
Advancement of Fat Acceptance
International Size Acceptance Association
Positive Perfect You
Body Positive
Largesse
Bella
Largely Happy
Real Women
Plus Models
FashionNZ
The Fit and Fat page
More to Love
Plus size beauty pageants
Push Play
Fat Cities
Fat Online
Fatso
Guardian
Shallow Hal
Wide, wonderful and on the web
People whose figures don't fit the fashion stereotype are fighting back, and the net is one of their forums, says SHELLEY HOWELLS.
Ninety-five per cent of weight lost by dieting is regained - usually with a few extra kilos thrown in for good measure.
Translation: dieting can make you fat.
Yet the
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